QUEENSLAND

QUEENSLAND is a ten-minute, two-player strategy game played with a checkers set. You need an 8×8 board and 12 pieces per player.

QUEENSLAND was first published as a free magazine game, then as part of the second Chief Herman’s collection, more than 10 years ago. Players take turns placing and moving pieces, never capturing, and trying to create pairs of pieces with the largest possible space between them.

We’ve created a free postcard-sized version of the rules, which you can download here.

Each Turn: You will do two things. First, you may move one of your pieces in a straight and clear line, orthogonally or diagonally. This is similar to a Queen’s move in chess, but you don’t capture.

Moving is always optional. You can’t make a move on your first turn, because you have no pieces on the board.

Second, you will place a new piece in any empty space on the board. Placing a piece is mandatory.

When the last piece is placed, the game is over. Take score as follows:

Scoring: For every clear path that connects two pieces of your color, you score one point for every empty space along that path. For example, the white-to-white path in the game pictured below is worth 3 points for White, and the black-to-black path is worth 4 points for Black.

Score every connection, add up your points, and the player with the most points is the winner!

You’ll notice that going first in this game is a slight disadvantage, so you should keep score for at least two games.

To play with more players, reduce the starting pieces so that the total number is still 24 (or, with 5 players, 25).